religion & politics

A friend of ours emailed this tonight & as a Canadian, this seems to be a doctored piece of bs to me......the friend seems to buy it, but who does a person trust in politics these days? Does anyone know how to check this kind of thing out?

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Now we know why Fox News never broadcast it as they originally planned to.

*I encourage you to please send this to everyone on your email list ASAP.**Remember all the notices we kept getting to watch Fox News on Sunday at 9PM? What Happened?**This is the clip that got pulled due to pressure from the Administration.*Obama Puts Heat on Fox News to Prevent Sean Hannity* from *airing this piece.*This is a video that Sean Hannity of FOX News has been trying to show that we are told has consistently been blocked by the Obama Administration for Several weeks.**Watch it now before it gets pulled from the Internet! *http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#t=28

"[The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans.] Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country — I know, because I am one of them."(Obama counting himself among these "other" Americans, in his April 6, 2009 address to the Turkish Parliament in Ankara.)

"[I’m a Christian, but] my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk."

"So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction [that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t]."

Anyone with a decent ear can HEAR the edits! I worked as a sound engineer for a while, and I have no problem hearing it. Indeed, I could have done a better job of editing than the dip who did this for Faux Noise!!!

I didn't have the patience to make it very far into the video, and the first few quotes rely only on dishonest cropping--where it's clear they're not presenting whole quotes! The FactCheck piece shows the more aggressive splicing that happens later on.

This looks like obvious propaganda to me, snippets taken out of context and remixed. The story about FOX bowing to administration pressure should be a hint. Such an introductory accusation is conspiracy theory 101. Look for more dirty politics like this on the internet as the election proceeds. Here's a video with no organization taking responsibility for it, making an obviously false inflammatory accusation.

Any public figure with hundreds of hours of public speeches could be made to appear in video to say anything. Any recorded gesture of understanding can be twisted into something that apparently horrible.

There was a Harry's Law episode "BreakingPoint" which showed techniques used in reality TV to spice up the show, where a woman's testimony of love and respect toward her husband changed to the worst kind of ridicule. While Harry's Law is fiction, unethical editing isn't hard to do.

Since when has Fox News ever bowed to "pressure from the Administration"? They'd be overjoyed to attack Barack Obama like this, if they had quotes that could stand up to scrutiny.

Another sign of bullshit: the video's title is "Obama Admits He Is A Muslim", yet it begins with the "Legal Disclaimer" that "The writers, producers, and editors of this video are not claiming or implying that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim [....]"

In the U.S. at least, truth is a defense against charges of libel.

Reading about those (un)reality TV techniques reminded me of a science-fiction world where the protagonist was wary of saying anything to a reporter, since the technology was widespread that could make an interviewed person appear to say anything desired, by analyzing and resynthesizing their phonemes and mouth and facial movements.

Of course we don't need that kind of "vocal photoshopping" to lie with quotes!

I remember an old Mad Magazine parody of the business of moviemaking, showing among other things how once the critics publish their reviews and ratings, "little stars, little bells, little half-stars", the studios proceed to misleadingly quote them in their movie ads -- with only slightly silly examples of scathing reviews being flipped 180 degrees: (from distant memory here)

What the critic wrote:

What the studio quoted:

After the movie was over I went up to the projection booth, took the film, and burned it. Boy, did I have a wonderful time!

Boy, did I have a wonderful time!

This is a good movie for stars to avoid, as it would do more harm than good to their careers....